Metcalf Landscape Leads Skinner American and European Auction

October 5, 2010 12:58pm

NEW YORK—A 1922 oil painting, Purple and Gold/A Vermont Landscape, by American Impressionist Willard Metcalf, was the top seller at Skinner’s Sept. 24 auction of American and European paintings and prints in Boston, earning $281,000, approaching double the $100,000/150,000 estimate.

In all, 520 (or 68 percent) of the 665 lots found buyers, and several that were unsold carried some of the highest estimates, including an untitled 1962 oil painting by Chuck Close that was expected to earn $60,000/80,000. The auction realized $1.86 million, just inside the estimate of $1.84 million/2.28 million.

Eanger Irving Couse’s oil painting Camp at Night, 1923, sold above the $50,000/70,000 estimate, for $77,025, while an undated View Near Sudbury that was attributed to “School of Thomas Gainsborough,” sold for $56,288 compared with an estimate of $2,000/3,000. Portrait of a Gentleman with Hat and Armor, attributed to 18th/19th century “Continental School,” sold for $23,700, well above the $800/1,200 estimate, and David Burliuk’s Flowers by the Shore, 1950, sold for $50,955 against an estimate of $20,000/30,000, Aldro Hibbard’s Covered Bridge, Vermont, ca. 1929, brought $47,400, on an estimate of $10,000/15,000, while a Rembrandt etching, Abraham’s Sacrifice, 1655, sold for $44,438, well above the estimate of $12,000/18,000.

Among the works that brought higher-than-expected prices were two early black-and-white photographs by Edward Weston: Rock – Point Lobos, 1929, sold for $8,888, and Mountains, New Mexico, 1933, sold for $16,590; each carried an estimate of $3,000/5,000.

On the other hand, Lyonel Feininger’s drawing It Happened in a Dream, 1946, sold for $13,035, well below the $20,0000/30,000 estimate, and an undated oil by Auguste Toulmouche, Maternal Affection, sold for $15,405, considerably lower than the $25,000/35,000 estimate.